J that lovely planet risa &
j I simply can't embrace j
j the glory that is kronos j
j it's mostly for the klingon race j
j but my station in deep space j
j is sadly much too far away j
j I miss the promenade j
j and the busy cargo bays j
j I left my quark &
j and captain sisko j
j nearby a trill
j they call to me j
j but deep space nine is rather far j
j I'm stuck on ferenginar j
j where it never rains, no, no j'
j it only pours j
j miss those dominion wars &
j I miss doc bashir j
j and constable odo j
j major Kira j
j and the operations team j
j I wish I could beam j
j beam all the way home j
j home to quark and captain sisko j
j to ds9, my happy time j
j my dream j
Excuse me.
Isn't this a bit premature?
All right now, that's enough. Cut!
A space battle?
Really?
We can wait on that one, ok?
Hello, my name is Andy Robinson.
I played garak, on Star Trek: Deep space nine which means,
I know a little something about truth and lies.
What we left behind, is merely a documentary.
And like most documentaries it consists of stories,
recalled in memory fueled by emotion.
Now, stories require embellishment.
Memory can be faulty,
and emotion often obscures clarity.
The end result is entertaining, informative, heartfelt,
but it is truth, as seen through a glass darkly.
I'm afraid...
It's the best we humans can do.
“I love Star Trek, but this show sucks!
They broke gene roddenberry's rules for Star Trek."
"The whole idea of Star Trek,
is the idea that they would be exploring new worlds
and going where no man has gone before."
"Not bumming around a space station talking about their feelings."
"It's more like a Star Trek soap opera:
As the space station turns.
Really kind of mediocre at best."
"Just watch, say, the second half of the second season,
and search online for the five to 10 best episodes."
"Anything else is losing precious time
you could use for something more pleasant like,
breaking each bone in your... Hand
with a rusted hammer!"
Oh, god.
Actors don't go into acting to be disliked.
They go into acting to be loved,
and certainly everyone thought, well, hey,
you know, everyone loves tng,
they're gonna love the next iteration of the franchise.
Well, when that did not happen, and that continued not to happen,
year in, year out, it gets a little wearisome.
And... it hurt the actors. I felt bad.
We were in a place where people were just,
I don't think they were really ready for the show.
And I think we were referred to as "the middle brother"
disparagingly by various people.
I knew that we were the bastard child, which actually was thrilling to me,
because that gave you guys the leeway to do pretty much anything you wanted.
We knew we were the middle child.
And we knew that, you know,
we weren't gonna get the respect that we deserved.
You have deep space nine.
It's entire existence,
was never alone.
It was either a companion piece fo next generation,
or a piece that was continuing as this new show voyager, began.
The first one, and next generation
are always the ones that are being promoted,
but it seems like our show,
which is every inch as good as those,
and, in my opinion, better,
excuse me, better, than those two shows,
there's still this perception that we don't match up.
I think in time we'll get there, but it's still slightly hurtful.
In the universe of new adventures,
where no one has gone before,
imagine,
Star Trek: Deep space nine
coming to your quadrant, January, 1993.
From a studio point of view
it was certainly one of the shows that we wanted to place a big bet on.
We were pretty confident that the audience would welcome this franchise.
I was so against it, my mom was against it.
I thought I knew what Star Trek was
based on the next generation and classic trek...
My idea of Star Trek is adventure and exploration...
It bothered me a lot that they didn't go out and boldly explore.
That's the whole point of Star Trek!
The mission of the enterprise is to seek out and contact alien life.
Let's see what's out there!
Warp nine, engage!
Mr. Paris, get us out of here!
You had tng and you had voyager.
Every week they went to a new planet,
and then, that was fun!
Who knows what was gonna happen on that planet?
We were on space station, slowly turning,
next to a wormhole, next to bajor.
It's not a crew on a ship named the enterprise,
going out and having fun adventures every week.
Um... it's definitely a darker show,
and I think that threw people off-kilter when it first came out.
What made me excited about I,
was that it was being sold as the dark Star Trek.
I would imagine the pilot was darker,
- and sexier than anything we had seen. - Yeah.
Everything about deep space nine was dark and dirty
and the characters didn't all get along,
and it was fun, it was exciting,
it was something totally different in the world of Star Trek.
I don't know if that was a copy line that the marketing department put out,
or if the fans started thinking about it that way,
but it... it got that reputation,
and some people still think of that.
They say, "oh I don't wanna watch it because it's darker."
Did you feel that the look of the show was different than tng?
The tone was completely different,
and part of that is decided by the production design, Herman's sets,
by Marvin rush who had been shooting the show.
The way the lighting was built into the set,
there were so many practical pieces of light that you could use,
and I always called it "film noir in space".
Rick and Michael, with our support, wanted to make a Star Trek show
that would satisfy a Star Trek audience but different.
I think we saw Avery Brooks on tape
before he came in and read,
but the sides that he was given to read, he just nailed it.
I thought he was terrific.
He was the only one for me, who was really able to do sisko,
because of the duality in his character.
He was able to play sisko with this huge weight on his shoulders,
which informed everything that he did.
I remember when Peter Allan fields and I
watched Avery's audition tapes for sisko.
We were shocked, we were shocked.
We expected to see a younger man
which is how the part had been written,
some guy who was still earning his way
in the federation chain of command,
and what we got instead was this mature man,
this powerful man.
And it's like, wait a second,
this isn't a commander, this is a captain.
Now, you can tell me that captains are on starships
and commanders are on static space stations,
and that might be right, but it's wrong for deep space nine,
and it's wrong for the guy we hired.
I remember coming on the lot of Paramount,
and there was hawk, standing there.
We had this big, black captain in your face.
America, come and look at me.
I'm running your show and this is the face of it.
So, when you tell me that hawk
is gonna be the captain of my new Star Trek show,
I'm like, "what?!"
This is amazing!
Like some silver-plated phaser
and he's got this awesome, like, ship he's gonna drive in,
and then he shows up with like a full head of hair
and boring-dad version of Avery Brooks.
There was a lot of conversation
about African-American men and facial hair,
that it was something that was very important.
I fought for three seasons
to get Avery to be allowed to wear the goat,
and shave his head.
This is a look he was very clear on,
that this is how he felt comfortable as a person in life.
Why did it take three seasons?
I do think going in...
Um...
Particularly given that he was coming off of hawk,
and we were also in the 24th century
that we thought it would be a mistake...
To, um...
To-to go, um...
For lack of a better term, 'street.'
in case there's any resistance out there to a black actor playing this role,
let's make him, you know, not quite an uncle Tom
but, you know, moving in that direction.
I mean, would a shaved head be an issue today? No.
When the bald came, and that goatee,
that had some strength like you can't even communicate.
It was terribly sexy.
I always wanted to touch it.
Nice.
I'm glad you like it.
One of the things that attracted me about the Star Trek,
was that I did not have prosthetic make-up on my face.
That in somewhere, some 400 years hence,
that I would be human,
completely human,
and brown...
Too.
See?
I was his first a.D. On his first episode.
- As a director? - As a director.
It was kind of hard, because he was very closed,
he wouldn't really share a lot of information.
He called me aside in quark's bar,
it was pitch black in there 'cause we weren't shooting in there,
it was dark and I went in and he said,
"I want you to make sure that I get what I need"
and I said, it's kind of difficult sometimes,
because I come to ask you questions
and then you act like you don't wanna tell me things,
or that I'm bothering you, and he said,
"I guess you don't understand my sense of humor."
And I said, "to be honest with you, sir,
- I'm not sure you have one." - Wow.
And he kind of reared back, his shoulders kind of reared back...
A little half-grin came on his face and he said,
"what is it you want to know?"
And I said, "I'd like to know,
when you have a scene in your mind,
to tell us what you want."
"Come with me", he said.
"The camera will be here on the Dolly.
We will pull back. They'll walk down here.
They sit down, we go into an over-the-shoulder.
We push in for a close-up.
We come around for an over-the-shoulder and push in for a close-up.
- Is that clear?" - And I said, "that's fantastic."
First time I had a big, long speech.
We're on the set, and I go through and I fumbled it a couple of times.
Avery just looks at me.
He comes up to me and he says, "glide. Dig?"
And he walks away.
And I said, ok, I get it because it's glide.
You just, move your way through it.
I think he did the same thing to Jeff. He said like, "slalom."
Slalom.
Get those flags on your shoulder,
go into the turn, put it all together, is basically what he's saying.
And go, take the ride.
When he speaks, it's not in full sentences.
What do you wanna know?
Who's your favorite character?
Child asked me.
Huh?
What do you mean? Who's my favorite character in Star Trek?
It's gotta be sisko!
What?
Don't make no sense, otherwise.
Avery is like,
a jazz musician.
- Jazz musician... - Jazz musician.
You wanna understand Avery Brooks?
Imagine that you're talking to a jazz musician.
Yeah.
The first scene I had with him where he called me "old man”,
I had to pull Avery aside.
He was saying it to me so stern,
and I was told that my character would be a humanoid
with a symbiont inside of her,
that had lived seven lifetimes.
It was about 350 years old, and had been a man and a woman
back and forth several times.
So I pulled him aside and I said, "Avery, I am so sorry but,
you're so much more mature than I am and I'm only 28.
I can't top you, and I need your help.
I'm really nervous about this,
- but, I can't be your mentor, it's clear." - So how did he change?
His performance wasn't as intense, it wasn't as intimidating.
He pulled back a little bit.
Benjamin, I was happy when I heard you accepted this assignment,
and I've been worried about you.
It's good to see you too, old man.
When we first talked about this documentary in 2013,
Avery Brooks said to me,
"you know, it can't just be a documentary about talking heads,"
and that's what put the idea in my head to do something different,
which was breaking episode one of this mythical season eight.
And I called all you guys up.
So what was the feeling when you heard about that,
and what was it like being in the room for that one day?
Well, first of all, any chance to sit in a room
with you and Ron and rené and hans, is, like, a golden thing.
So to get the five of us together just to have a drink
or-or eat some Sushi together, is like,
I'll clear my schedule for that,
but to sit together to talk about deep space nine?
Oh, even better.
To break an episode, how can that not be the most fun thing ever?
So, it is march 8th, 2015,
the band is back together.
So, the idea is, there's going to be an eighth season.
This is our deep space nine.
There's no one looking over our shoulders,
it's where we think the series,
in the current landscape of television, would go.
We're trying to come up with something we could actually produce,
- theoretically, right now. - Yes, yes.
- So 20 years have gone by in the story. - Yeah.
I'd like to begin on the defiant...
With nog, who's in starfleet,
- captain nog by now probably. - Who could be a captain,
and they are getting their asses kicked. We start on action.
It's evasive maneuvers, it's don't fire back.
He's trying to escape, and we don't realize,
we're wondering why was he attacked, what has he got...
- He was attacked by a cloaked ship... - By a cloaked ship.
So he's on the run, someone's shooting at him.
Maybe he's running for the wormhole.
And when he makes it through the wormhole that's his escape
but on the other side of the wormhole the ship is out of power and drifting.
He looks out the window and he's like, "oh, thank god."
Pan up from the ship...
Well, that's end of the tease, isn't it?
I'll tune in. I wanna know what the hell is going on.
Everything that you do, when you do a story about space,
when you do Star Trek in particular,
you can't just go rent a place in Hollywood and start shooting.
You had to build it.
For a designer, this is heaven.
All you get to do is play.
All you get to do is dream up new things,
and because it's in the future, nobody can say you're wrong.
Did we work on deep space nine?
- We had fun on deep space nine... - Yeah, I don't remember us ever working.
We're sitting here, in front of the space station,
I just think it's absolutely beautiful.
The initial concept was largely based on an ail rig,
with some terracing from a shopping mall with slips and docs.
We came up with a model that I was very proud of.
Rick berman said something that infuriated me at the time
but turned out to be brilliantly insightful.
He said, "at it's core it has to be a simple design,
that an eight-year-old child can draw, and you know what it is."
So that's the direction we went.
Going inside the station, if you look at the production design,
the world of deep space nine, the scale of everything,
it really had a feel that this is a place where people live and work.
Greatest Star Trek set ever.
Herman Zimmerman, boy, he pulled out all the stops on that one.
Now the promenade had an 80-foot radius.
That's a pretty big set.
I couldn't believe, first of all, that he got it onto the stage.
It was big, it was colorful,
it was impressive and overwhelming a little bit.
Every detail was there, and it was from wall to wall.
You were in a different world.
Wait a minute! What about the power supply grid?
Do you think it'll be enough to eliminate the force fields?
If we could overload the grid,
we might be able to cause a power surge.
Let's give it a try.
Our characters not only our jobs but who we were,
we were serious, driven, complex women.
I loved math and science, especially science,
and I really identified with the character jadzia Dax.
I was watching characters like jadzia Dax,
who didn't let gender roles stop her from doing anything she wanted to do.
I liked how she was an alien,
but also very kind and loving,
and I liked how she had a strong personality.
Because of Star Trek I want to become a scientist.
I love Kira, and I love Dax.
And, as a young woman, it's really important to me
to see such amazing female characters on TV.
And they both taught me how to not take shit from anybody.
So, thank you, deep space nine.
I'll take the controls, if you like.
That'll be the day.
What did you think when you got the role?
My first thought was that it didn't read like a woman,
and I loved that.
I loved that it was not skewed sexually.
I like the character of Kira nerys.
She's sassy, she stands up for herself.
She was feisty, and angry, the same way I was when I was a kid.
She's tough, smart and kick-ass!
Women can be strong and be passionate, just like men can.
I watched ds9 couple of years ago,
and then I recognized something enlightening and very beautiful.
From moogie, to leeta, to Keiko to ezri,
jadzia, kasidy, adami, and, of course, Kira nerys.
Deep space nine offered a wide spectrum of female personalities,
beautifully written feminism,
and... equality.
J I'm a bitch j
j I'ma lover j
j I'm a child j
j I'm a mother j
j I'm a sinner j
j I'm a Saint j
j I do not feel ashamed j
j I'm your hell j
j I'm your dream j
j I'm nothing in between j
j you know I wouldn't want it any other way j
perhaps we could discuss these new rules over a drink.
If you don't take that hand off my hip,
you'll never be able to raise a glass with it again.
Common slate... Mark!
- Tell me when you're ready. - I think we're good.
"Sisko is too politically correct.
Dax is too perfect.
Quark is ridiculous.
I tire of human-like aliens with head bumps."
Well, sometimes so did I.
Is there anything else I could do to make your stay a pleasant one?
Invite me to dinner.
I'd be honored.
Whenever there was a ferengi episode,
I would bring all of the major characters in that episode
into my house on Saturday and Sunday,
and we'd rehearse the show.
I had such respect for you guys for doing that.
I was well aware from the very beginning that you guys were doing that.
No, I didn't know that.
And it's not something you could force someone to do...
- No, you can't. - You can't put out an edict
to get people to do that, it has to come from the heart.
We read it and we talk about it, and then we have a little preparation.
When we come on at 7:00 in the morning or whenever it is,
after three hours of make-up, we have a little bit of it in the bank already.
It was such an honor to be invited to these rehearsals that armin's.
It was fun. It was working with wonderful people.
I mean, you walk in and there's Aron and armin
and Max and Jeff and Wally Shawn and cecily Adams.
Cecily called me up,
and said, "armin, they want me to audition for moogie."
And I said, "great!"
And she came over to the house,
and kitty and I worked with her on our audition
and we were delighted when you cast her.
I know the two of us living under the same roof isn't going to be easy,
but you're my mother and I love you.
And I love you too,
but when you say "living together”, what are we talking about, a day?
A week, two weeks?
I don't know. I guess till I start feeling better.
Unless, of course, you don't want me.
You're my son, how could I refuse you?
It was like a family on the show, you know.
It was like a family on the show.
All the ferengis who spoke,
they all had their own specifically sculpted head.
And they had their assigned make-up artists who'd put 'em on.
We were doing a scene, and armin's make-up lady,
I think, couldn't be there that day.
They came in, and I looked at armin and I said,
"you don't look the same today."
Then I looked at Max and I said, "you don't look the same either.
Are you guys wearing each other's heads?"
They looked in the mirror and they went, "oh, my god, how could this happen!
It was on the mannequin! It was marked for this!"
"Look! Here's the deal.
In an hour, I'm going into that bar,
and I want two ferengis with their heads on right when I do."
You know there's a reason why that story, you've never heard that story.
With all due respect to Lou, I don't think that ever happened.
I can't speak to the heads, I don't remember.
But very definitely,
we had cheek-nose-cheek pieces that were put on.
He got mine, I got his.
That response has invalidated this entire documentary.
- So sorry... - 'Cause now we have no idea...
- What's true. - Who's telling us the truth...
- It was rashomon. It's rashomon. - This is rashomon.
We have no idea. I'm so glad I asked this question, next!
The make-up took four hours.
And colm, who was always bitching,
always bitching about sitting in the chair for five minutes.
He'd get antsy. "Alright, you don't need to do this."
"So, that's enough of that." You know.
I mean, it just cracked me up.
I was bitching about everything, all of it.
And Michael and I had this running thing about the make-up
'cause he'd be in the chair for an hour, an hour-and-a-half before me,
before I'd get in.
I'd pop in and get my little bit of powder done,
and he'd look over at me and go, "you bastard!
You bastard! Get out!"
When Avery, Rene and colm had to be in makeup, I was so happy!
Colm, whined.
My favorite, he says,
"me teeth! Look what they did to me teeth!" You know?
And, "me nails, look what they did to me nails!"
They put glue up here, and he couldn't shut his eyes.
I can't close my eyes! I can't... I feel like I can't blink!
Putting on the make-up was quite thrilling.
It was going through the day in the make-up that was hard.
I'm claustrophobic, and it was when they put the wig on, I felt sealed in.
I remember going out into the sunlight with that piece on,
and all of a sudden I was covered by ants, that's how I felt.
There were long fingernails,
that made many aspects of life very difficult.
It was an intensely uncomfortable make-up to wear.
René was great to work with.
He didn't abuse his make-up.
He was conscious of what he was having for lunch.
I couldn't eat, really, solid food,
I would be in that make-up for hours and hours on end,
and I think it affected...
My persona on the set.
People who didn't know me
thought I was probably as grumpy as the character odo.
I was walking down to the set
on the last episode of season six,
and you were coming out of the sound stage,
and you ripped your sweaty, disgusting mask off
and said, "here, take it as a souvenir!”
It's like here, take my pain, that you are causing me to go through.
And I remember walking all the way back,
and I had it mounted, and it's in my living room,
and in my library today,
and I'm gonna keep it forever.
There's a certain kind of actor,
and you take them out of the contemporary world and they're lost.
And then there are the other actors,
an actor who maybe never gets to be a leading man,
suddenly gets to be a leading man,
you know, because he's wearing this make-up.
I'm thinking of you Marc alaimo.
You, as an actor, reminded us a lot of Avery as an actor
in that you, very strong,
when another actor acted against you,
- you weren't gonna give them any ground... - Thank you...
They had to take it from you, they had to meet you head on...
Why didn't you tell me all that before?
Here we go!
I never felt appreciated on the show.
We have had this discussion, in Vegas that time...
Nobody ever came up to me in the beginning and encouraged me,
gave me any support, nothing!
And that really bothered me.
You felt like you weren't having enough interaction
- with myself and the writers... - Yeah, I always did.
I wanted somebody to come up and say, "man, you got this, baby!
You nailed this character."
But nobody ever, you know, did that.
And I will say it again, the way you know we liked you,
was that you kept coming back, and that your role kept getting better.
That is how writers tell an actor that they like them more than anything.
I suppose it's because of my overwhelming charm.
Michael piller called me up and said,
"we're going to open season two with a three-part episode."
Something that had never been done in the franchise history.
That's the moment where I started to think,
ok, deep space nine gives us opportunities
that the other shows do not have or did not have, and that's exciting.
There's been a lot of talk lately about the influence deep space nine
has had on television, and paving the way for highly serialized storytelling.
I think ds9 never gets quite enough credit
for all of the things that it did as incredibly well as it did them,
and how early they were doing them.
Star Trek: Deep space nine was part of a little renaissance
that was going in the 90s, in television writing.
Without the pioneering of serialized storytelling,
we wouldn't have game of thrones, we wouldn't have walking dead,
we wouldn't have any number of these appointment television shows
that we have now.
Paramount was adamant about us
not having continuing storylines.
In our shows, the rule was no serialization.
People want self-contained episodes.
I know people in the studio were nervous about the fact
that people might not have seen it last week, so might not know what was going on.
In those days, people used words like syndication
which don't really exist anymore.
Um, you needed every show like a McDonald's beef burger
to be the same wherever the hell you were
and at whatever level of seasons.
Being episodic, you're able to jump in.
It's one episode, it opens and closes and you get the gist of what's going on.
Well, deep space nine being serialized, you have to follow along.
I thought it was a great creative risk to do it,
but, you know, there is a price to pay
for anything you do that might rock the boat, right?
It lost us fans along the way.
Some markets, it was at weird hours,
some markets, the show would be dropped for a week.
How's anybody supposed to keep up with the continuity?
Because if you missed one when it was running real time,
you were totally out of the loop.
The studio was very clear,
you are killing the series by serializing it.
I knew what they were saying made sense to them,
but I did not think it made sense for deep space nine.
Deep space nine seemed to call out for serialization.
I think the biggest question posed by the series finale,
is what happens with sisko, you know?
It's difficult to explain.
- It's not linear. - What isn't?
My life,
my destiny.
The prophets saved me, kasidy.
I'm their emissary.
He's going back to learn from them he says,
in the wormhole, the celestial temple.
You're with us, now.
If he didn't come back,
whether time is weird or not, the repercu... I mean, that's big.
- Remember, his pregnant wife and son. - Yeah.
- But time is weird in the wormhole. - For him it's been a minute,
and a million years simultaneously.
- Right. - Yeah.
- But the promise he made... - He made a promise he'd be back.
Maybe a year.
Maybe,
yesterday.
But I will be back.
Should the sequence start two weeks earlier on deep space nine,
so you get a glimpse of what deep space nine is?
Deep space nine is now a religious shrine.
People come to watch the wormhole open.
It's mecca! It's like the... It's a pilgrimage site.
I have a big pitch for Kira.
She's a priestess of some kind.
- That's cool... - So that she's really...
- A vedek... vedek Kira? - Yeah. Exactly.
- I think that's really cool. - Wow. Cool. Wow.
She's on deep space nine but as a vedek.
If there was a religious revival on bajor,
it's kind of interesting to get her swept up in it.
She was the warrior to save bajor,
and now she's still a warrior,
but she's a warrior for the religion.
Quark comes in to see her,
and she's got the pad where she says, "is this true?"
"Look, I'm just the messenger.
I'm delivering the message, you got it, you don't have to come."
"Well, of course, I'm coming. I mean, I don't know who else is gonna come."
So let's start with o'brien. Where is he in his life?
- What is he doing... - He's the Dean
of mechanical engineering at starfleet academy or whatever...
- Still? - Yeah.
So we see o'brien comes home,
and there's some kind of a invitation.
"Come to ds9, Keiko's going..."
- We could see Molly... - Right. Molly's 26...
Well, touch on the fact Molly's at deep space nine, which is a big thing.
She says, "and it's a chance to see Julian, too."
He goes "well, yeah, that's part of it."
Ezri's the commander of a ship,
and bashir is her medical officer
and they're off boldly going.
Now bashir and ezri are married though, right?
- Correct. - It'd be nice if somebody
- was in a happy relationship. - Yes!
I-I wouldn't mind seeing a relationship that's lasted.
- Worf is coming from kronos. - Q'onos.
Q, apostrophe o-n-o-s, I think.
- That look right? - I think that's it.
It's... martok is old, and he's transitioning out.
I think he's got a very close relationship with worf,
and worf is gonna be his successor.
I think it's martok saying,
"by all means, go and see your friends."
Or is it, "there are rumblings, worf"?
Something is going on with bajor.
This is a perfect excuse to show up
with a klingon warship, and see what's going on.
I think we end with Jake.
He's Jake sisko the novelist now, right?
I think Jake wrote deep space nine over the last 20 years.
Yeah, he's Benny Russell.
He's off, isolated,
he sends out his stories, his novels
and he's successful at it, it's just like in the visitor.
If we could see the equivalent of: "Message from quark."
And he just goes: Delete. He just deletes it...
Yeah, I love that.
We should cut to him in the shower.
We could just do that...
And see him standing in white for just a second.
He looks. There's a reaction shot and then we cut.
Big reunion, right?
And everyone's in quark's.
Quark still is glad to see us, but he's glad to see anyone...
'Cause no one paid their bar bills when they left.
Yeah, he's still got the tab!
He still has the tab!
With interest.
You just had that moment of reunion,
if you put the gang back together in a room, there is that sense of...
There's the one key element that's missing.
That sisko's not here and they keep talkin' about it,
and it's the ghost in the room.
A man who became a god, and he's supposed to be right over there,
the celestial temple, you can see it out the window every once in a while,
and there's frustrations and there's sort of...
He never came back. I thought he would come back.
He said he would come back, you know?
Then Jake shows up. Jake's the last one to come.
"Now that we're all here we should all go see him.
Quark says, "yeah, he really wants to see everyone."
He's dying.
Yeah, it's just he's dying, it's who's dying?
So, one by one you start to eliminate all the suspects,
and at this point you're thinking it's sisko.
- Right. - Then you just cut,
and they're walking into Vic fontaine's.
I just think we should have to embrace the preposterousness of the fact
that all these characters are gonna come from all over the world
to visit a dying hologram.
- I love that but that's... - We should own that...
And I think you own it, because I think there is something heartfelt
about that character and his connection to those characters.
When you watch the finale, there's so much about that special place
- and how important it all was to them... - Right.
I kind of buy it.
The fun thing is that you walk in there and he's like,
"don't hit me, pally! I got news for ya.
Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”
And they all look to quark, and he goes, "I don't know.
My nephew, nog, the starfleet officer, asked me to do this."
And then we cut to... Nog is on the view screen,
and now we're caught up in time.
"I'm sorry I brought you all here on false pretenses,
but you'll understand why."
And then, boom!
I like the idea of saying, ok, here he is, beloved character.
Look at nog, he's made it. We love him.
Good on you nog. Boom!
Guess what?
This is deep space nine, don't get too comfortable.
Being a writer, on Star Trek, is like being on the bridge of the enterprise.
Essentially, the metaphor of going into space where no one has gone before,
is what a writer does every time he sits down to the word processor.
And it's as scary as it is for those people
who are facing the unknown in space,
'cause the blank page is our universe, and it's the unknown.
Michael truly believed that writers were born, not made.
He believed that if you were a writer,
there was nothing else that you could do.
He felt that he knew from when he was a teenager
that that was literally the only thing
that he was gonna be able to do in his life.
I think so many people owe Michael a lot.
If it weren't for Michael bringing that script submission policy to Star Trek,
which was the only show in Hollywood that did that,
a lot of people would not have the careers that they have now.
I remember Mike being a brilliant,
slightly odd,
incredibly hard-to-please guy.
He was also incredibly generous. Um, he worked his butt off.
He thought about character first.
Plot was always secondary.
Plot only existed to explain and to reveal character.
Many times I heard Michael say to a writer,
"in this scene, don't be afraid to empty the pockets."
And that meant, in this scene,
it's all about revealing the character for who they really are.
To go deep, beneath the surface of the character,
and reveal them in a way the audience had never thought of,
or never expected, or just didn't know.
The development of so many characters
went so deep, and acted so profound,
that it made the whole series very interesting.
It went where no one has gone before.
It pursued the journey inside,
not the journey out.
We spent more time talking about characters
and "what's the growth?" "What's the failure?"
I loved creating a character for seven years,
that changed every week and season,
and evolved in such a rich way.
I remember being struck by the odo character
and the idea that he worked there before, and he's still working there.
- You know? The same thing... - Oh, yeah...
- He worked for the cardassians. - Yeah, now he's still there.
I think those stepping stones were really important
for odo to keep moving towards his ultimate destiny.
I remember wanting to write for odo,
and wanting to do quark/odo stuff.
It felt like there was comedy fo be mined there,
and they were such a great duo.
Armin and I, it was a different working dynamic
but very tight and trusting.
The last scene between quark and odo,
the fact that, even in parting, we're still going to play this game
and never admit to each other what we mean to each other.
Are you telling me that after all these years,
after all we've been through,
you're not even gonna say goodbye to me?
- Don't take it hard quark... - Hard?
What are you talking about?
That man loves me!
Didn't you see?
It was written all over his back.
See, I would've thought you would be more interested in what it was like
when I finally got to get it on with Kira.
Are we gonna have dinner together or not?
And if we do, then what?
I don't know, maybe we could go dancing?
And after that, I suppose you'll expect me to kiss you.
- It's possible... - Then who needs dinner?
Why don't I just get it over with and kiss you right now?
Well, why don't you?
This really was a deep, loving friendship,
that became a romance.
It was not something we were looking to do,
you guys gave it to us in dailies.
Doesn't it look like odo has feelings for Kira?
Doesn't Kira get a little softer around...
So we just followed your lead.
You guys, decided to make odo and Kira a couple.
But instead of just having them get lost together
in the forest or something like that,
you put together a musical romantic comedy,
in a 60's Las Vegas nightclub
with odo playing piano,
and Kira, Nana visitor, singing.
I loved that episode!
I was a full-on,
realized person,
who was a gray character.
During the occupation,
I didn't want to attack any facility that had a bajoran working in it,
but I did it.
Anyone who's not fighting with you, is fighting against you.
Reading her, you'd have to jolt yourself awake.
She was terrorist.
Who's a terrorist and who's not depends on your perspective.
The British saw George Washington as a terrorist, we see him as a war hero.
And same with Kira, 'cause we like her, as viewers,
and we've come to despise the cardassians,
we give her a lot more latitude.
The whole allegory of terrorism is playing out in a rather disturbing way
that was not happening in the 90s.
When our show was on, terrorism was just plain old terrorism
in those days. Something that happened to other people.
Do you think we could've played it after 9/11?
I don't know. I really don't know.
Uh... maybe not the way she existed then.
What am I supposed to feel repentant for? What are you talking about?
You did this to me, and you don't even know who I am.
Fifteen million bajorans died during the occupation
and you want me to feel sorry for you?
I can't imagine doing the show today,
and being able to play Kira in quite that way.
Now, there have been plenty of terrorist characters on television.
On homeland, Brody was a fascinating, complex character,
but he was a problem for that show.
We were always questioning Brody.
Kira, never.
A very different time.
- There's a bond between us. - No, only in your mind.
You're an opportunistic, power-hungry dictator,
and I want nothing more to do with you.
I loved working with Nana.
I always had that feeling I wanted to break her,
as a character,
and force her to fall in love with him.
I could make things very pleasant for you here, Kira.
You know, dukat was a pretty,
pretty sexy guy, he was a pretty sexy character.
He was always on the make for her, and she always pulled away.
If there had been another road to go down,
were they like, secretly in love or something,
that would've been terrific, but it never happened.
I remember, you came to me and you said,
"get ready for the next script.
You and gul dukat have an affair."
No, we never wrote it, so that could not be...
Oh, oh, that! Oh!
This was... ok.
So remember you said you never fought with me?
Yeah. No, I remember...
Do you remember me going, "it can't be. It can't be gul dukat.
Anybody but gul dukat."
And you really wanted it to happen,
'cause I remember, when the script came out,
you said, "ok, it's not you. It's your mother."
That's right.
- Yeah! - But we never... we never wrote...
- You never wrote that one. - We never wrote the script,
that's all I'm saying.
I remember you coming to me. No, that was the most...
- Upset I was, yeah. - Upset you were, without a doubt.
If it hadn't been odo,
I would've loved for it to be a cardassian.
That would've been a great relationship, but just not Marc alaimo...
Not, not...
- Gul dukat. Gul dukat... - Hello!
- Say that again, say that again. - Gul dukat...
Please just start all over again.
If it hadn't been odo I would've loved
to have had a relationship with a cardassian,
but just not gul dukat.
How about Marc alaimo?
I always felt...
That he was, he wanted her.
And it was easy, 'cause at the time, I wanted her!
Back in the day when the show was on,
without a doubt the most popular recurring character,
and certainly the most popular cardassian, was gul dukat.
I would say in 2017, the most popular character is now garak.
Wow!
- Garak! - Garak.
- Garak? - Garak.
- Garak.
It's gonna be garak.
Why garak?
He was the mystery character.
He was the cardassian on his own on deep space nine.
Why he was there, no one knew.
Was he a spy?
We didn't know, until bashir strikes up this unusual friendship with garak,
and every time bashir tried to tap and find out more about garak,
we had more questions than answers.
What did garak think of bashir?
Were they friends?
Did they develop a friendship?
Or was he using him the whole time?
At first, he just wanted to have sex with him. That's absolutely clear.
That's all he wanted from him.
"Come to my shop, I got some nice clothes for you...
But you'll have to change first."
But then it really got complicated,
especially when garak's addiction and despair began to surface.
He needed someone to share it with.
He's the type of mysterious guy in ds9,
tried to live his life as a tailor.
"I forgot all about the tailor. A fucking tailor. Fuck me!
Ds9 is a religious dogma disguised as entertainment.”
"How about the tailor..." The fucking tailor...
"Plain and simple garak, compounded by the fact
that there only seems to be about 12 people in the universe
and the inclusion of a lounge singer as a serious character?"
B Mark.
J out of the tree of life I just picked me a plum j
j you came along and everything started to hum j
I love the duet with Avery.
We're having a good time.
And I'm thinking to myself, "man, captain sisko is singing with me.
Is this, like, too much?
Where the hell did this come from?"
J the best is yet to come j
j come the day you're mine j
dd
Vic dealt with simple wisdom.
If he was profound, he was profound in the simplest way possible.
It's the oldest story in the book.
She thinks of you as a friend.
I wouldn't call that a secret.
But, women have been known to change their minds,
you just have to give them a reason.
He had great stories, as Jimmy,
that I think the cast liked to hear,
and it relaxed the cast just being around Jimmy.
I'm dealing with people who look entirely different,
from anything or anyone else that I'd ever met
- in my-in my life... - Yeah.
Even though I'm a hologram.
I never said, "wow, this guy is a weird looking cat."
Like, this guy's got a different nose or big ears.
He dealt with them like frank talking to Dean, you know what I mean?
Jimmy and Vic, the character and the person playing that character,
there's wasn't a lot of difference between the two of 'em on a lot of levels.
You wanna choose a holo-suite program for your rehab?
Why not?
Ok, kid!
That's the way you want it, from now on you're staying with me.
Great!
Nog had a bigger story arc,
than any lead character on other shows.
Nog went from being Jake's buddy on the promenade,
to being a starfleet officer, to having his leg blown off.
I mean, show me any character on tng,
that you can trace their story like that.
You can't and that's nog.
Probably no character on any of the other shows evolved as much
as the least changed character on deep space nine.
Some of the nicest episodes were done by the non-regulars.
By the incredible guest stars, and recurring characters that we had.
Especially, the recurring characters.
I have to hand it to you guys.
Your whole writing staff created this great complex character
that got to change over time.
A bit early, isn't it?
Even for you.
Just something to warm the bones, it's freezing in here.
What an arc to play, hmm?
- To go from... - Waiting on weapons, sir.
- To... - I call upon cardassians everywhere.
Resist.
Resist today.
Resist tomorrow.
Resist till the last dominion soldier
has been driven from our soll.
I don't remember damar being a big character...
- He had one line, two lines. - And so, that's probably the biggest...
I would call that the biggest success story, you know, in a weird way.
There was just a guy who has one line, who suddenly became so pivotal.
Leeta was just somebody you'd notice, and she did that well.
And so you'd want to write her the next little dabo piece
or do something else with rom.
You just kept finding ways to get back to them,
'cause you like them as characters in the writer's room,
and before you know it, they were part of the whole extended family in the show.
We had a huge recurring cast on deep space.
They were 18 or 20 people on hold every week.
- There was felecia bell. - Aron eisenberg.
- Camille saviola. - Marc alaimo.
- Max grodénchik. - Mark Allen Shepherd.
- Andrew Robinson. - Roasalind chao.
- Hana hatae. - Wallace Shawn.
- Tiny Ron. - Majel Barrett.
- Louise Fletcher. - Philip anglim.
- John colicos. - Paul dooley.
- Salome jens. - Kenneth Marshall.
- Robert O'Reilly. - Chase Masterson.
- Penny Johnson. - Duncan regehr.
- J.g. Hertzler. - Brock Peters.
- Casey Biggs. - Melanie Smith.
- Cecily Adams. - Barry jenner.
- William sadler. - James Darren.
- Deborah Lacey. - Jeffrey combs.
- Jeffrey combs.
I mean, Jeffrey was always up for anything,
which is why he could do multiple parts.
Correct me if I'm wrong, ira, but if I'm not mistaken,
the very first episode that I played as weyoun,
- I'm killed at the end. - Yeah.
So, obviously there was... I thought it was a one-er.
It's a one-er when you get killed at the end...
- When you get killed at the end! - It's hard to think of it as a two-er.
Now mind you, I was killed by Clarence Williams lll,
which I thought was the coolest thing.
- Mod squad, Linc is gonna kill me. - Yeah.
If you don't mind, I'd like to inspect the wreckage.
That was for questioning our loyalty.
We wind up enjoying the character so much,
we killed you, brought you back, killed you, brought you back.
- I saw you die. - That wasn't me.
At least not exactly.
There was that group of people who, indeed,
almost just sort of felt like an extended part of our family.
A band of brothers, that's what it is.
It is the company, it is the comradery,
and it's legit.
We are always tremendously happy
to see each other and be with each other.
"This is mostly not Star Trek.
No, this is about the insane corruption
of the Star Trek universe.
I literally hate the main characters.
They act like thugs, blackmailing, coercing.
There seems to be no prime directive,
or even morality among starfleet.
It's like a clumsy rip-off of Babylon 5
which in itself wasn't very good."
Wow. That must of been difficult at times for you...
- What, for me? - As a writer.
- Why? - But, I don't know,
- I don't... - I kind of loved it.
- Oh, you did? - Yeah, I mean,
everyone's got their opinion, and you know,
they're... if...
If you're not doing something right
unless you got people up in arms.
- That's true... - That's true of any creative endeavor,
people aren't bothered by it or don't like it, you're doing something wrong.
So, it's nice to know that we hit a button there.
It might not be the button we were aiming for,
but we definitely hit a button.
Fire!
I had some very, very interesting,
and very memorable experiences on that show.
We film this death scene,
and, you know, I die in Nicole de boer's arms,
and it was a cool little death scene.
And as soon as the director says, "cut. Ok, print that one,"
ira loudly, and proudly announces to the entire crew and cast,
"ladies and gentlemen, Star Trek just killed will Robinson!"
Danger will Robinson!
I didn't get to go down to the set that much, certainly for pleasure.
But the fact that I went down there fo see that death scene,
I think speaks of my friendship to you
that I took the time out of my busy schedule
just to make sure you were dead!
The crew on ds9, by the time I was there,
were kind of running on fumes.
There was a lot of hours on that show.
Now I've been in a lot of companies in my life,
and this was one of the most intense.
We did wonderful, painful work.
It was often very painful to do.
The hours were killing, you know, and plus we never went out.
So, you guys were stuck inside.
And when we did go out, it was, like, in the desert,
at 100 degrees, with our make-up melting.
And it was like a minimum of 16 hours.
Sixteen, seventeen hours a day...
Average day was 14 hours. Sixteen, eighteen was not uncommon.
I have times where I show up on the set and the crew on deep space nine,
they light up with energy because it's like, "oh, we're gonna do a stunt!"
But it's easy to come in with great energy
when you're only there for one to two days a week.
You guys are workin' the full deal, 60, 70, 80 hours a week
and so it's hard to be up all the time.
You get up at 2:00, you try to pull your thoughts together,
you drive down there, you pull in at around 4:00 A.M.,
and go to the chair to get made up.
That was three and a half hours of make-up and then another half hour of costumes.
So at 7:30-8:00, you're called to the set
and you start approximately a 15-hour day of shooting.
I did something that I'd never...
Done before or since. I...
I believe I literally fell asleep on camera,
which is very unusual
because, ordinarily, people stay awake when they're being filmed.
We needed to distinguish the gamma quadrant
from everywhere else.
That it couldn't just be another frontier,
it had to had to have something that would set it apart.
And then we started talking about the idea that there would be
a worthy foe hiding in the gamma quadrant.
We wanted to break away from the past and create our own future,
and that's how the dominion was born.
But since we were writers and so insecure,
I said, "we can't risk it all on one race of villains."
The marching orders I gave fo Jim and Pete and Robert,
was that we were gonna come up with three villains.
We created this warrior race, the jem'hadar,
and then the face men, the vorta,
and then behind it, the founders that ran everything.
The founders would be the shape-shifters, they would be odo's people.
You belong to the dominion, don't you?
Belong to it?
Major, the changelings are the dominion.
When the founders were revealed
that this was gonna become a galactic war saga,
I got really excited.
Dominion, really, really well thought out...
- Yeah, very well thought out. - Opponents.
A complex society, not all the same race.
Were there any favorite episodes
that stick out in your mind?
Yes, the last 10 were my favorite,
because they were emotional and suspenseful.
- The last... episo... - Ten.
You mean the dominion war?
Yes, those were my favorite.
The dominion wars, tell me why it was a mistake.
Gene roddenberry was my symbiont, he was my curzon Dax.
Gene was a firm believer that Star Trek was not a franchise that dealt with wars.
Looking back 20 years later, I was most likely... mistaken
because we got some remarkable episodes out of it.
We had this crazy idea to blow up a ship
that looked just like the enterprise as our season two finale,
and that implied something.
We needed our own little kind of ship.
We created the dominion,
this great enemy of the federation,
and all we have to fight them
are these tiny, little, crappy, runabouts.
It just isn't going to work.
We needed something with fire power, something dangerous.
We come up with this idea for the defiant and you were not happy.
You kept saying, "we can't have a ship.
Voyager is the ship, deep space nine is the space station."
The idea of having this show
that was going to perhaps start getting more oriented
toward our characters being on board a spaceship,
while voyager was on the air,
and while next generation movies were in production,
got me a little bit nervous.
But as usual, you, uh, conned me into it.
There were very few things you didn't con me into, ira.
I thought it was more of a partnership.
A warm agreement.
Excuse me.
Hello?
I can't believe you killed nog.
Andy, it's all theoretical. It's not a real episode.
If you touch one hair on Julian's head...
But that's not why I called. It's time to show the space battle.
How do you even know where we are in the doc?
Trust me, I know now show the clip.
And, ira, if you had to kill someone,
it should've been worf.
Ok, then.
Let's show the battle scene, I guess.
That's one down!
Can we shake the other three?
I'm trying!
We've lost aft shields!
Forward shields are down to 15 percent.
Wouldn't this be a good time to cloak?
The cloaking system's fried.
Auxiliary power to weapons. We're going to fight our way out of this!
It's the klingons, sir.
They're here!
Captain, the klingons have broken a hole in the dominion lines.
Dax, can you get us through?
I'd love to try.
So the defiant blows up, killing nog. We kill nog.
I'm sorry, guys, someone has to go.
I drove all the way here thinking,
o'brien, o'brien, we kill o'brien
and we'll freak everyone out.
But by the time I parked, it was like, nog.
Damn it, ira, don't kill nog!
Jesus Christ!
Ok, did you like that? Was that good? Ok good.
This is our opportunity to kinda set the table of what...
- Right. - The situation at the station is.
Who's putting pressure on Kira?
It's her major. Major whatever his name is.
- Major palik. - Palik, sure.
If palik's the guy who's sayin', the sensor tells us this,
and the debris field says that...
His ship was damaged coming out of the wormhole,
maybe he had some asteroid debris that he hit.
I think he's saying it's an accident, nothing to see here.
Cut from that to quark's. They're in there, and they're drinking.
It's like they can't believe he's gone, and then just one person
just has to raise the "you know the thing that still bugs me..."
Then it's like boom, boom, boom. They all start saying,
"yeah, you know what? This is weird."
- They're trying to piece together... - What was nog doing?
- What was he doing? - He'd been pushing his engines.
The engines tore themselves apart.
He wanted to make a big entrance or something, we don't know.
- And someone has to be saying "no, hey..." - Molly.
"I knew captain nog."
I don't even know what you're talking about.
This is a guy I served with. This is a guy who I respected.
This is a man, this is like,
you guys are talking about a kid you knew back 20 years ago.
He drew us here for a reason, and he had something to tell us
and then he happened to die.
- Yeah right... - It's just too perfect.
What could be interesting is if worf, who's now a diplomat
more than he's a soldier says, "the treaty of so and so.
It's very specific when it comes to the death of federation citizens.
Ezri, you are in charge of investigating this."
- If it's Kira, palik and ezri... - Yeah.
And ezri asserting her rights...
I think ezri can say something like "look, the treaty of whatever.
Federation gets to investigate. We have jurisdiction."
I think she should put a clock on it.
"How long were you planning on staying, three days?"
"And then you'll catch your trip home."
- And then ezri walks out... - And palik...
And there's palik, Kira and it's like, "well, this is gonna be a problem."
Say beat four is a walk-and-talk on the upper level of the promenade.
Kira is talking to the federation science officer.
And it's like, listen, I want you to look at this stuff.
"You're the best science officer we have on this station.
I want you to do this as a favor to me.
I wanna see whatever you get before you give it to ezri."
She walks away, he's staring out the window.
Jake comes up.
"Were you ever gonna come to say hello to me?"
He goes, "hey I've been here, you're the one who arrived.”
Turns out he is Joseph sisko.
Joseph yates-sisko...
The reveal that this is sisko's other son?
I think Jake reveals that he's seen his father.
"I came here because I had a vision."
"He came to me, he told me to come home."
What was your favorite mission you've been on in deep space nine?
My favorite mission?
My favorite mission was raising Jake.
Come on. Come on, man!
And... the blue light is on,
and it's fading away, and it's fading away...
And he's fading away, and now he brings him up...
Excuse me... come on!
Start from the top, from the top.
- Sorry... - Come on, man.
- Sorry. - All right, here we go.
And he slowly comes up...
And...
Cut! Good!
I realize the significance and importance of the small things that we did
that Avery was aware of.
I didn't realize it at the time,
but it was important for him to set a precedent
for a black man raising a child,
being there, being a father,
being involved in his child's life,
having that as his primary concern in life.
It was a reality of the disproportionate...
Disproportionate number of-of brown, male children
without father figures, et cetera.
So, it was very important to me,
that that relationship, you know, remained strong.
He was creating a role model for people to follow,
particularly African-American men,
in terms of how to treat your son.
I thought that he did such an outstanding job
with the creation of his relationship with Jake.
The bond that the two of them had, off-camera,
I thought for a moment that Avery was his daddy...
Because they had such a wonderful strength together.
When we weren't working, he'd take me to a basketball game.
He took me to my first Lakers game,
uh, introduced me to Jerry buss and magic Johnson,
and introduced me as his son, with his son.
You know, "these are my children," that's how he would, you know, introduce me.
And, um, I felt like part of his family,
I felt the love, I still feel that way.
He hasn't let go at all, you know.
We still maintain a very close relationship.
What?
I was just thinking...
How much you look like your mom.
When you look up black shows in the 90s,
you won't find our show,
on the list, at all.
Recently there was this show on CNN called the 90s.
And on the episode dealing with television,
they stated something
that surprised me
and really kind of pissed me off.
The 90s gave us several shows
that didn't really explode in the ratings
but were very influential to other people making television.
Homicide is one of them.
They had so many African-American characters in the cast,
that on several occasions, they were the only people
on camera interacting with one another.
And that sounds like, "so?"
But as late as the 90s, that wasn't done on television.
It's not true.
One of the identifying traits of deep space nine,
was that we had many scenes with an all-black cast.
Ira behr came to me,
he said, "I have this idea
and I wanna know whether you are interested,
because you will be in front of the camera,
but I also wanna know if you wanna direct."
I said "well, ok."
And, you know, because of the writing of it,
because it talked about 1953,
because it talked about who we are or who we were,
this idea of this brown man,
writing this science fiction,
I thought that was incredibly clever.
Originally, on our director's schedule for that season,
Avery wasn't scheduled to direct far beyond the stars,
and I think as we talked about it more, it became clear,
we can't not have Avery direct that episode,
because it's all about representing
this struggle in our country's past
and, in some senses, the present.
He didn't wanna publish my story, and we all know why.
Because my hero is a colored man!
Hey! This magazine belongs to Mr. stone.
If he doesn't want to publish this month we don't publish this month, end of story.
When Benny Russell had his breakdown,
that was more realistic, I think, than most of the fans realized.
- To hell with you... - Avery was so deeply into the character,
that he went down and stayed down.
There are things I don't remember in my life,
but I can see him on the floor.
He falls to the floor, and I'm saying, "well, I gotta say cut.
But how long should I let this go on?"
They called cut, and he's not coming out.
And I know what that feels like as an actor.
You're gone, and he was... he was gone.
If I'd stood there for a half an hour, I think he would have kept on.
He was very committed to that part and very committed to that scene.
He would say, "well, we want those moments on set."
He would say it as a director, "we want god to show up."
Meaning it's beyond control,
it could go one way or the other.
You don't know, it's dangerous, it's dangerous acting.
So it was-it was scary and wonderful.
Can I have my drawing back?
Hey, boy.
I'd watch that tone of voice if I were you.
Having an African-American captain right after these L.A. riots,
I think that gives the show some real weight,
and of course in my classroom, using Star Trek: Deep space nine,
particularly the episode far beyond the stars,
that is where I really bring in
the experiences of the early 90s.
When we were doing the show,
Rodney king was getting beat on television.
Twenty-five years later...
Black people are getting beaten and killed on television.
We haven't advanced much.
- Yeah! - Yeah!
We got pulled over for a busted tail light...
You also had people, very fine people, on both sides.
The bottom line is, when people cannot come to the conclusion
that every person on this planet,
is worth treating as a human being,
when we cannot agree on that basic,
most basic concept,
don't talk to me about 400 years from now.
The good news is, is this is gonna be
- a short act. - Yes.
So act three is, then they have to do whatever investigation they're gonna do.
The question is still open. What was nog up to?
What was he doing in the days leading up to his death?
Just to pitch it, there's something really interesting about,
if we have a detective on this show.
If we have a cop on this show, it's odo,
and what he comes back for is
to figure out who murdered nog.
If Kira asks for his help, then I buy it.
If Kira goes to him and says, "nog has been murdered.
I need you. I need you to figure this out,"
he'll do it for her, that I buy.
We can easily save odo for another episode.
I'm just saying, it's ok to keep them wanting more.
- Sure, sure... - You know?
Now I really believe we could do 26 episodes.
- I'm on board now... - Twenty-six?
- So, ops, where are we? - Somebody's quarters.
Ezri, she walks in the door if you play it from the beginning.
And maybe we say this is the entire starfleet contingent.
And she says, "you guys are livin' in the boonies!"
They say, "yeah, well, that's our life here."
Somebody says something like,
"nog got obsessed with something in the last couple of weeks.
He didn't talk about it, but he knew it was important.
And I don't know what happened, but I know that he and Kira
- had a major blowout..." - That's good...
"The day before he left," or whatever...
- Had a blow out with Kira? - "Well, she didn't tell us about that."
- Yeah. - You know, and then you go back to Kira,
"hey, you failed to mention that you and nog had..."
"Well, because that is irrelevant.
He died in an accident,
what we were arguing about has nothing to do with that."
I would have her not say it's an accident. What I would say is,
"I'm going to handle this."
- That's better. - Yeah.
"Look, it's not 20 years ago.
This isn't your job anymore.
This is gonna get handled, but I want you off the station. Go home."
This is on the klingon ship, right?
Worf is executing the afternoon's batch of prisoners.
"Today is a good day to die for you and you and you."
What I thought, you beam worf down to bajor.
And then garak appears.
- They're not particularly friendly... - They still didn't like each other.
But it's, what the hell's going on?
Don't trust the bajorans.
- "Including Kira?" "Especially Kira." - Yeah,
you know, it's that kind of...
Well, why wouldn't garak reach out to bashir or...
He knows worf is a man of honor who will act on this information.
Worf is a klingon, and this time we klingon rules.
We need someone who's gonna get pissed off.
Garak says, "martok wanted proof. I've got proof, here it is."
And he pulls out a thing, and he shows him.
"Here is vedek Kira on a missionary excursion."
"Those are jem'hadar."
- "Yes, they've converted.” - They haven't announced it yet...
They haven't announced it yet,
but you're looking at the new bajoran army.
Yeah, and we think nog got onto that, and that's why he was killed.
"You have no friends here, trust no one."
- Trust no one. - No one.
- Commander worf! - Chief.
- It has been a long time. - Too long, welcome aboard!
Just what this station needs,
another klingon.
I don't remember whether I was asked by the studio to bring worf on
or to bring a next generation character on.
I get a call in my hotel room from Rick,
and he said, um, "I wanna ask you something.
How would you feel about coming back on deep space?"
The studio was concerned that we weren't doing well enough
and that we needed to compete.
They just sort of gave us one of the greatest hits from another show,
and brought him on to our show and said, "make it work."
I thought it would be a little difficult for some people.
It pissed us off, not because of Michael, Michael's a lovely man.
It was an acknowledgment, certainly of tng,
which had been a huge success, and was making movies and all that stuff,
that's where I felt slighted.
I get the klingon thing we can bring that in, but I wasn't excited about it.
I was nervous.
I felt like it was a threat to my character.
I thought that he would suddenly be the right hand man,
and I would be demoted to bringing them coffee.
Maybe it's a sign of my, perhaps,
lack of engagement toward things in the world,
but it never occurred to me to go beyond that.
I was delighted to see Michael,
I had known Michael from tng,
and, you know, delighted to see him there. He's a great guy, and a terrific actor.
People ask me, "what was your favorite episode?"
You know, and I say, "well, my best was on deep space nine.
There were two klingon episodes that were just shakespearean and epic."
I mean, they were just beautiful.
Once more into the breach, where kor dies,
and soldiers of the empire.
That's Star Trek, that's klingons.
On the enterprise I was considered to be quite amusing.
That must of been one dull ship.
He was the most dour klingon,
even as a kick-ass klingon.
You gave him sex appeal, and he gave you
the right to become "action Barbie, '
- or whatever you wanna call it. - Right, right. Oh that was levar!
Levar Burton was directing one of the episodes,
and levar had called me "action Barbie",
and I was like "yes!" That was so cool.
Suddenly Dax could dust it up with the best of 'em...
I loved it!
Do you remember coming up to me and telling me
- you were gonna make Dax more roguish? - Yeah!
I was so excited when you said that! Yes!
- Doesn't she ever lose? - Ahh. Don't you wish!
All of that gave me more depth,
it gave me something rich to pull on.
When she came into the show, she did not know what she was doing.
She didn't know how fo act, she didn't know anything.
This was her graduate school.
She just got better and better and more confident.
At the end of the fifth season,
before the sixth season ever started,
um...
That's when negotiations were supposed to start for the seventh season.
Like, a certain group of us was given a take it or leave it offer.
There was no obligation to go forward,
but, naturally,
um... you want to.
You broke my heart a little bit.
My heart was broken too.
The last season when I was told by one of our producers
that I was really lucky to be there
and I really should sign the next contract
because if I weren't there on the set, I'd be at kmart.
That was the last straw for me.
She's definitely coming back, I don't care what they're saying.
I just refused to believe it.
- Yeah, I couldn't understand that... - 'Cause we had the whole...
- The worf story was a big... success. - Yeah.
How did Terry Farrell get away that late in the game?
They usually only get to you as a studio head
after they've had the same conversation
in a different way with the executive producers.
What I didn't appreciate was somebody not talking to me.
And I really felt like it was important to be heard.
If you think I'm valuable, how come I'm not being listened to?
I remember distinctly,
you know, one meeting where she came into my office and was crying,
and she felt that there were opportunities for her in network shows,
and she said that, "I just want out."
I didn't want to die,
but there was a point where it was like, you know what?
Don't dismiss me!
Talk to me!
I can't imagine that anybody wanted her to go away.
She was good.
Only the people involved know the facts.
We just know what people wanna tell us.
- Who died there? - Jadzial
- she died in the shrine. - Jadzia died in the shrine.
End of season six.
That's how we got ezri.
I thought she died on a ship
and ezri was the only one that could take her trill... ness.
- Yeah? - She died on the station,
and ezri was the closest trill to deep space nine,
- or something like that? - Yeah, that's it.
- Something like that. - I wasn't even there
- and I remember it better than you. - I thought she died on a ship.
I know this has been a hard time for you, old man, but...
Don't call me that!
I'm not the old man, I'm not curzon or jadzia.
No, you're ezri, ezri Dax.
When ezri came along, I thought that was a smart addition, out of necessity,
and to make her a follow-up Dax was brilliant as well,
because you still had the essence of what the audience knew,
yet it's something new and different.
It makes so much sense that it be someone
who continues on one of your loved characters.
You know, you now get to still see how everybody feels
about losing jadzia through ezri.
By-by this horrible collision of losing Terry
and bringing on a new character,
it gave you a whole... bang!
It'll be just like old times.
Except, different.
Nicole had a strength about her.
- And she had a spark. - Yeah.
And, she was up for it. There were a lot of people that wouldn't consider that,
because they felt like it was the last year,
and she embraced it completely.
I did feel like Alice in wonderland
being dropped into this amazing,
fleshed out, realized world of rich characters
that I got to play with,
but it was tempered with the fact that there's gonna be fans
that aren't gonna like me, ever.
This is just, forget about that, you know that, it's fact.
We were introducing a new character,
which was really fun to write. She was really fun to write.
I do remember liking how it changed the dynamics of her and worf.
I can't believe I'm stuck here with youl!
Perhaps you would rather be back on the station with captain boday.
You sli' vak!
When Nicole came on the show, there was an easy way to go:
Ok, they're gonna get back together, and you just went, blip!
- Julian? - Yes.
- We have to get up. - Are you sure?
The big pressure was, when I started working on deep space nine,
I was supposed to be a sexy dude.
I had never got the girl, you know.
In the beginning I wasn't really a huge fan.
Everyone hated him at the beginning. He was just like a really annoying guy.
I'm aware that I have a tendency to run off at the mouth sometimes.
- Is that a fact? - Suppose it's just a nervous habit.
- I hope you don't hold it against me. - Oh, not at all, sir.
Julian bashir was too immature.
Intellectually far more cooked than he is emotionally.
Terry Farrell, she was suddenly my love interest.
I was punching above my weight when I was on the same stage with Terry.
Yes.
- All of them? - You heard her, Julian.
Jadzia had no need for bashir. When ezri came along...
- Good morning. - Good morning.
It's like she was not intimidating.
She seemed to need bashir as much as bashir needed her.
Finally, in season seven, a love story for bashir that worked.
Oh, right!
And who, originally, way, way back,
was obsessed with her. And she thought he was so callous.
- Yeah! - You know? We made lemonade.
Dr. bashir became a lot more complex by the end.
He really grew on me.
You know, by the end he was awesome.
Bashir was arced beautifully
in the simple relationships he had with the women on the station.
With jadzia Dax and, finally, with ezri.
He had matured, he'd arrived.
I'm prior service, and there's a lot of prior service people here.
I'm a veteran of both Afghanistan and a rotation of the Republic of Korea.
I was in the military for a long time.
- I was in the military. - I retired from the Navy.
I served for 15 years.
I'm in the army reserves. I'm a captain.
Captain Benjamin sisko, Avery Brooks.
He is the reason why I joined the United States Navy.
Every Friday morning, for the past three months,
I've posted the official list of starfleet personnel killed,
wounded, or missing in the war.
It's become something of a grim ritual around here.
Not a week goes by that someone doesn't find the name of a loved one,
a friend, or an acquaintance on that damned list.
I've grown to hate Fridays.
When I talk to people who are ex-service people,
as your commanding officer, they don't want a friend.
They want someone who's gonna keep them alive,
and I think Avery played sisko as a man
who cared deeply about keeping his people alive
in very, very dangerous circumstances.
The war, at this time, allowed, I think, the show to deal with
a lot of these kinds of issues that traditionally don't get dealt with.
We tend to focus on the nature of the conflict and the exploding ships,
and the fighting itself, and not what are the other costs of war.
There's no such thing as a good war, or a just war.
Everybody who gets involved in a war,
gets blood on their hands, period, full-stop.
Kira was a freedom-fighter,
she had post-traumatic stress.
That is someone who is on the edge of their emotions.
She can't just calm down, not able to.
I think within seven years, we showed a progression of a freedom-fighter,
with post-traumatic stress,
who gradually recovers by the end of the show.
The show really spoke
about nuances of war that people don't know.
Deep space nine had the guts to have an episode with nog losing his leg.
I can't tell you how many times a veteran has come to me,
and they would say, "that show... that show helped me.
It helped me when I came back.
It helped me get through," you know, whatever the individual was dealing with.
And that's powerful.
If I can get shot, if I can lose my leg,
anything can happen to me, Vic.
If I stay here, at least I know what the future is going to be like.
You stay here, you're gonna die.
Not all at once, but little by little.
Eventually, you'll become as hollow as I am.
Science fiction allows you to do a lot of different things
that you couldn't do on regular network television.
It allows you to explore all these different kinds of social,
political and cultural issues.
It allowed for exploration of family relationships,
and depth of character and even, the bajoran religion,
which is less exploration-oriented,
and more about the dynamics and conflicts going on
with these characters that we see regularly.
Deep space nine takes religion seriously.
- No no. - The rest of trek is science or religion,
whereas deep space nine is like... It's a bit more complicated than that.
The captain's faith is strong.
He will prevail.
It's not much to bet his life on.
You're wrong.
It's everything.
I like the idea that they could have that spirituality
and science come together in a show like this.
It makes it easier, I think, to explore religious themes,
in the context of a different culture, as opposed to ours,
where everyone is applying value judgments.
I really respected how hard you guys were trying
to give the lgbt community representation.
At the time in the 90s, it was a big thing to have gay relationships.
There were quite a few people that were upset,
that had thought there should be a warning,
because they were upset that they couldn't
have a conversation with their children
about what the episode was about.
So we did something controversial that,
still to this day people come up to me and say, "thank you."
That was the first time I felt like I saw two people just love each other,
not because of what their sex was,
but just because they really just loved each other.
You know what? Lose the check.
- Really? - Yeah, lose it.
We did not earn a check for sexual identity.
How come? I thought rejoined was a wonderful episode.
Yeah, it was great, but one episode in seven years,
we could've done better.
Trust me, we should've done better.
What about profit and lace?
That was all about sexual identity and it actually plays better today
than when it originally aired.
Comedy's too broad.
We should've played it for drama.
Besides, garak was clearly gay.
I mean, everyone knew it, and we never played it.
What we should've done, after the wire in season two,
the episode where bashir helps him get over his addiction,
we should've had garak come out to bashir as a gay cardassian.
You think that the studio would have actually let you do that?
Maybe not, I don't know. Probably not, but we never asked.
That's why we don't get the check.
Garak comes out as gay in season two,
we have five seasons to play that bashir and garak relationship.
Where that would have gone, who the hell knows,
but it could've been so cool.
Well, then you want me to change that to an "x"?
An "x" that is harsh.
Let's not be so self-critical, ok?
Ok, well how about this?
Yeah, that'll do.
I think it's time we get back to the film. How do we do that?
I think you can just press any of those buttons there.
- How about the big red one? - Try it.
Ok, hold on to my hat.
In the context of the 90s,
this is when homelessness was really becoming a public issue.
By the early 2020s, there was a place like this
in every major city in the United States.
Why are these people in here? Are they criminals?
No, people with criminal records weren't allowed
in the sanctuary districts.
Then what did they do to deserve this?
Nothing, just people...
Without jobs or places to live.
Past tense, parts one and two, that was full-on
social... commentary.
I mean, that episode... I mean, look at today, it's kind of happening.
Everybody thinks it's prophetic.
It isn't, and we're still suffering from the same problem.
It got to the point where they didn't care
how many people were in here.
They just wanted to keep them out of sight.
That only makes things worse.
Causing people to suffer because you hate them is terrible.
But causing people to suffer because you have forgotten how to care,
that's really hard to understand.
Documentary is a finite thing, you only have so much time.
We did the writers' room,
we could only have so many writers in there
for the one day we were doing it, without it being too many voices.
So I just wanted to give a nod to those people who were on the show.
Peter Allan fields who created the character of garak.
Jim Crocker, who came in season two and helped create the dominion
and David weddle and Bradley Thompson
who came as freelancers in season five,
and were on staff for seasons six and seven.
I salute all of those people.
I have a thought, I have a thought.
You don't have to raise your hand, you're the head writer.
He's the boss!
Well, I was thinking, the one thing that we did that I know I'm proud of,
and I think we're all proud of, is that bajor never got into the federation.
Season one, episode one was,
"Ben, you're here to get bajor into the federation."
And bajor said, "screw you guys. We're taking your captain
and we're making him a god.”
I like the idea of using section 31.
I know they used it in a movie but it's ours, we created it.
And I think it's talking about today's political situation.
I think the plan of section 31,
is this is the example to them,
in their way of thinking,
why religion had to disappear from earth.
'Cause religion separates you from other people,
so we have to kill the bajoran religion.
Section 31's plan is,
if you destroy the wormhole and the prophets,
simultaneously shut down the gate,
then suddenly, we'll be the big players in town again.
Without them knowing it's us.
That's very important! No fingerprints!
Right.
Once that's gone, then they will see the light,
according to section 31,
and without religion propping them up,
they'll come into the federation.
The other thing I was thinking was, if any of our characters
actually did end up in section 31
and maybe running the goddamn thing
would be bashir.
Contemporary storytelling.
It's allowing some of our characters to have really lost their way, you know?
So it's 5:30.
Do we wanna just, like, kind of give a big shape for four
and a big shape for five, and call it a day?
Like in the old days, in the real of it we would all now go off and take pitches
and we'd come back tomorrow morning and we'd go like,
- "we know we can finish this tomorrow." - Right.
But, we're not coming back tomorrow.
Well, ok, going where we were going,
there's been tensions rising between the federation
and the bajoran authorities...
Palik is specifically worried
that some element of the bajoran government
ordered nog's death and murdered him.
Palik eventually is putting the pressure on Kira to like, "hey!"
- "Kick the federation off the station..." - Exactly!
- Kira is boxed in a bit... - Because of the jem'hadar, right?
She's in on that. That's why she's more on edge.
- She's not as open... - She's not happy about it.
She's not happy, but it's a secret she has to hold,
'cause that's her oath and she can't tell her old friends
that this is what their government's really thinking about doing.
I think we could do this act in five scenes.
However we do it, at the end four,
Joseph sisko could come find Jake
and tell him, "I've got news for you. Starfleet killed your buddy nog."
Section 31 killed nog because nog knew something...
What he was really finding out was that section 31 was gonna kill the prophets.
He had found that out, he was rushing back to say, "holy shit."
Yeah, that's the mystery within the mystery! Yes!
All right, so then act five.
That's when things spiral out of control.
Kira's kicking people off the station and they don't wanna go,
and now you've got some run and jump or some stuff,
and then guns are drawn.
Bird of prey moving. You've got bajoran ships moving,
there's even a starfleet vessel coming in.
This is gonna explode.
And then Kira could show up "what the hell are you doing?"
"I have my orders.
You can stand on my side of the barrel or the other side.
It's your choice, vedek."
You can get that moment, where which side will Kira stand on?
And she pulls out a security guard's gun and she steps in front of her friends.
Guns come up.
They're all about to shoot at each other, and then...
And a big white light, "what's happening?"
And then sisko appears.
Sisko appears on the klingon bridge, he appears on the bajoran bridge,
he appears in all these places simultaneously,
and then the last place he ends up... Is with Jake.
He turns...
“I'm sorry."
It's the first episode of a long season, right?
A long season. It's the first episode of a long season,
and you just wanna say, "holy shit!"
And now we can leave that as a cliffhanger
and we'll all walk away, pat ourselves on the back,
and think our imaginary selves will have to get together
to break the imaginary rest of the season,
which is fine, 'cause we know we would come up with something.
I think if we would keep going,
we would keep massaging the mythology a bit.
- Yeah, of course. - But I think the general shape...
This is one day... Shape of it is kind of there.
It took us two whole days to break these stories back in the day, you know?
Sometimes three!
The lesson is, when you don't pay us, we do faster, better work.
To the best crew any captain ever had.
This may be the last time we're all together,
but no matter what the future holds,
a part of us, will always remain here, on deep space nine.
Dd
I started to think about the title of this final episode,
which is what you leave behind,
and I started to think, "what have we left behind?"
I think I leave behind a lot of good memories of a lot of talented people.
I leave behind a Star Trek franchise
that will forever be different because of what we did on deep space nine.
They told more intimate, character-driven stories.
Star Trek, as a franchise, has always been very progressive.
But I think that deep space nine doesn't get enough credit for really being
probably the most progressive.
Of all the treks, I think it's the one that holds up most
- to modern viewing, actually. - I think so, yeah.
- Again, ahead of its time. - Yeah.
I've noticed that there's a whole different group of fans now,
because it's being shown and streamed.
They binge-watch it, like we're all doing now,
and they really get the flavor of the whole show.
You can watch the whole thing in, like, a week, if you're me, or a month...
It's just amazing, you know?
If it's your favorite show, you can binge watch it many times.
I never get sick of my favorite shows.
That's been the key.
Not making people watch it every week at 4:00 A.M.
The show is the same exact show, nothing has changed.
What's changed is the delivery system.
Now it's easy to binge, time has been good to deep space nine.
You've seen the original series, you've seen next generation,
now watch Star Trek: The best generation, that's how I describe deep space nine.
We put together a series of actors,
and a series of characters,
and it leaves me with a great sense of pride and satisfaction that it worked.
Being a part of television history like that,
being a part of being able to communicate with not millions of people,
but hundreds of millions of people over the years,
and tell them stories that maybe affected their lives,
is a big thing to take with you.
We're in viegas right now, with a ton of people downstairs.
Three, four, 5,000 people, they love the show.
Just took 'em 20 years to get here.
People, whenever they're in a series, or a movie,
"oh, we're such a family, we're such a family."
And that's true, it's true, but there is a deeper,
a familial connection,
and I've been so blessed that I've had that in my life.
I have this show in my life,
in one form or other, just about every day.
And that's a gift, it's taught me so much.
We're really lucky to have this experience.
There's not one other job I've ever done,
that I am this connected to the people.
If some being came down and said, "ok, this is it.
You can't do the business anymore,” I'd say, "fine."
It was a great period in my life.
It was a period I enjoyed immensely.
We left behind something that touched so many millions of people around the world,
that I think it's a good shared legacy for all of us.
I left behind a cast and crew
that probably won't be together again, at least not in the same way.
That's very emotional, you know?
Ha!
What I left behind was...
Any... bitterness,
any resentment about the business.
So many things changed in my life because of this,
because of playing garak.
I've gained so much more than I ever left behind.
I learned to love life.
I don't do it as well as quark,
but I try to emulate what he taught me.
The time that we spent together is so magical.
It was so much fun.
I had such a wonderful time.
That seven years changed my life.
I just wish there was a way I could go back
and just relive that, just one more time.
It would make me so happy.
I feel like I started this journey on this doc for the actors.
And, obviously, as we started working on this doc,
I started to include the writers,
the crew, everyone who worked on the show.
But originally, it was for the actors.
To give them validation for the work they had done.
As we do the documentary,
I realized what a hollow pursuit that was,
because the validation,
the important validation, has been there all along.
It's all of us.
We are the validation.
Family, is the validation.
It's not gonna say best known as Clayton endicott lll on Benson,
'cause he was a wonderful, funny character but he was a nit-wit,
and so now...
What can I say?
I don't know what else to say.
Dd
J j
Casey.
- Jeff. - Gentlemen.
Where's Max?
J it's the end of the line &
j we've run out of time j
oh, yeah!
J our story has gone the distance j
j but here's one final rhyme j
j a little song for the road j
j don't wanna say goodbye j
j but we've reached the end of the line j
j at the end of the line j
j like the end of ds9 j
j we remember what we left behind &
j from cardassia prime j&
j to that wormhole divine &
j we remember what we left behind &
- here's one for you. - Ok. Go ahead.
What?
J we've traveled through time j
- we have. - Yes.
J taking you all along j
j it's hard to express how we feel j
j in one simple song j
j if we had one more season j
j we'd call it "season eight" j
what?
J it could be all about section 31 j
j oh, wouldn't that be great j
j great j
j I gotta step aside j
j let my ferengi be j
j but if they ever bring back quark's bar j
j the drinks are on me j
- finally... - Oh, I love you, too!
J as the years roll on by j
j please keep this in mind j&
j as long as we're together j&
j we've left nothing behind &
j at the end of the line j
j like the end of ds9 j
j we remember what we left behind &
j from cardassia prime j&
& to that wormhole divine j
j we remember what we left behind j
j we remember j
j what we left j
j behind j
that's a wrap!
That's a wrap.
Come on!
All right.
Ok, ok, I know what you're all thinking.
A full-length documentary about Star Trek: Deep space nine,
and not a single mention of iggy pop?
Why am I not surprised?
Yeah, I get it.
Well, we tried, I called his manager.
Iggy was overseas touring, but I was gonna call again...
- Wait. Wait! No. Wait. - And I...
Sorry, I'm really sorry.
A small confab.
- Iggy pop. - Yeah.
Really? No, I love iggy ro
but out of all the things that you left out of what we left behind,
iggy pop?
Yeah!
Well, no, what about trials and tribble-ations?
We did a lovely piece about trials and tribble-ations.
- Good... - It was in the cut, it was out of the cut.
It was in, it was out. Check the special features.
- I will. - And while you're waiting for that...
Here's your very own tribble.
Thank you! No, wait, no. This is not gonna distract me.
- In the pale moonlight. - Same thing, in, out.
- And you can live with that? - I can live with it.
I can live with it.
No, you cannot live with leaving out duet.
Everything I did was for the greater glory of cardassia!
Nana, are you really going to ask me about every single episode?
No, no, not every episode,
just the really great ones and the ones with great titles
- like the visitor. - We'd be here all day.
Besides, why just concentrate on episodes?
What about the time...
What about the time we put Keiko o'brien's baby
into Kira's body just so we could justify your real life pregnancy?
I'm so glad you brought that up, because wasn't that your wife's idea?
Laura, no mention? Don't get it.
You're not gonna mention Laura?
You've never forgiven me, for your mother and gul dukat.
Yeah, that's true.
Look, there's a whole bunch of other stuff we could talk about.
What about the bashir and o'brien's seven year friendship...
- Yes. - What about morn?
- Right... - What about the mirror universe?
What about ferengis as 20th century human beings?
- What about your marriage to sid? - What about all those things?
We had to make choices, Nana, difficult choices,
otherwise this film would be eight hours long, at least.
He says that like it's a bad thing.
You realize, Nana, that by now, no one is paying attention to you and me?
All the indiegogo backers are looking for their names on these credits.
- Oh, yeah. Yeah, fair enough. - How do say that name?
- Ohh. That's tough. - That's a tough one huh?
Yeah.
So I'm just... one more thing and I'm done. One more thing.
How could you leave out
the single greatest moment
in our show's seven-year history?
And what the hell would that be?
Oh, my god. Oh, my god, ira...
- Huh? - Oh, wow. You know something?
- You have a point. - Yep.
She has a point.
Run the greatest moment, in ds9 history.
J allamaraine, count to four j
j allamaraine, then two more j
j allamaraine, if you can see j
j allamaraine, you can come see j
j allamaraine, if you can see j
j allamaraine, you'll come with me j
What I want to know is, out of all the stories you told me,
which ones were true and which ones weren't?
My dear doctor, they're all true.
Even the lies?
Especially, the lies.